Past Regret, Future Promise
by nerosredqueen
Summary: Dante x Nero. Dante talks with Nero about Vergil. What Vergil meant to him then, and what Nero means to him now.


Everything is surprisingly quiet at Devil May Cry on a Saturday evening. Nero rubs his eyes and sits up in Dante's bed; he's puzzled for a moment as to what woke him so suddenly because it is, in fact, so quiet. Perhaps he felt Dante missing? The presence of his warm chest against his back, the strong arm around him; that must be it, he thinks.

Nero can see the sun is beginning to set outside, soft light beams in through the small window of the small bedroom. He looks over at the imprint of Dante's body on the other side of the bed and a small smile spreads across his lips. In his absence, Dante has placed a blue rose on the pillow. Nero pulls on his pajama pants and t-shirt and heads downstairs, the rose in hand.

Dante is sitting silently on the stoop outside, thinking to himself, watching the sun set, a yellow-orange glow on his skin, a light cool breeze blowing throw his slightly damp hair. Trish sits in the sitting area of the office, the "living room" if you could call it that, absent-mindedly filing her nails, thinking about what new items to order out of her latest fashion magazine, she's not bothering Dante, giving him time to himself on this particular day, she's happy to do it, he deserves some quiet sometimes, just like everyone else. Her thoughts about both Dante and her fashion craving are dissolved when she hears Nero run down from upstairs. She smiles warmly at him.

"Hey, sweetie, what's up?"

Nero smiles back, he likes how she says that to him, instead of calling him "kid" or something else, it makes him feel welcomed. "Seen Dante around?" He asks her with genuine curiosity.

"Out on the stoop, he's taking a time-out."

"Oh, is he ok? I woke and he was gone."

"Why, you miss him?" She smirks, knowing full well that he did miss him out of bed, and she thinks his bona fide worrying is nothing short of adorable. In that moment, she feels glad for Dante, having someone to worry over him like that.

"Aww, c'mon now." Nero says, looking away from her, blushing slightly.

"Today is a rough day for him; he usually sits out there like that thinking about it. He says he wants to be alone, but I bet he'd like to hear from you."

"Hmmm, are you sure? I wouldn't want to intrude on his personal space or anything, not if it's serious."

"I'm sure he'd love to hear your voice right now. It's better for him to be with you than alone anyway."

Nero says nothing, merely gives her a small, weak smile, and walks out the front door.

And there's Dante, still watching the sunset, the orange glow making his eyes an unnatural, beautiful blue. He's just out of the shower it seems, he's sitting shirtless and his hair looks damp. Nero furrows his brow while rubbing his own t-shirt arms against the chill.

"It's a lovely sunset and all, but don't you think its a little cold out here to be shirtless and wet. Did I miss the wet-Dante contest?" Nero expects a response of the up most sarcastic nature, but the older devil hunter says nothing, just keeps staring straight ahead, as if in a trance by something in the distance. Nero looks to where he's looking but sees nothing, only an empty lot between some other buildings up the street a ways. Is that what he's looking at?

"Are you looking at something I can't see? Dante?" This comes out sounding like he's making fun of him, when honestly he IS worried Dante is looking upon something Nero himself is not capable of visioning.

Nero is just about to say 'please say something' when Dante speaks, slowly and calmly, even soothingly: "I don't find it cold. Not like you would." Translation: I'm not human, remember, dummy?

"Oh, right. Of course you wouldn't. I'm sure in Japanese your name probably means man with balls of brass or some shit right?"

That gets his attention. Dante smiles very lightly and looks at Nero, still standing over him from the corner of his eye. "Thank you for coming out here, sit down, kid."

"Thank you for the rose, that was very…clever of you."

"You're welcome. I past a place on the street, I can't look at one of those without thinking about you now."

Nero holds up the rose, admiring its brilliant color. Then, with a sound of worry once more, he breaks the new silence. "What's going on, Dante? Are you ok, baby?" Nero places his hand on Dante's bare shoulder, rubs it slightly in a comforting way.

"I'm glad you came out here."

"Me too, but why am I out here?"

"When I left you in bed earlier this afternoon, I watched you sleep for a while, I even kissed you. I had decided then in that moment not to burden you with what today is. What today marks the anniversary of, now I can see, that was a mistake."

"You've lost me." Nero says, truly confused.

"You see that vacant spot over there, where that part of the city is slightly crumbled even today, around it? Fifteen years ago, that's where Temen-ni-gru rose up, and today is the anniversary of the day my brother died; the day I killed him."

Nero sits, silently shocked. Dante has never told him about his brother, Nero, at this moment, cannot even register his name. "I'm sorry." He says then, knowing how generic and stupid it sounds, but not knowing what else to say.

"Not to say that it was fifteen years ago when I sent him away for good, that was about seven or so years go, but if there's one spot in the this world that reminds me of Vergil, it's that vacant lot just up the road there."

Ah, Vergil, Nero thinks, that's the name. He's vaguely aware of the legend of The Sons of Sparda, just as the world is, knows a little more from what Trish told him, Vergil's need for power and Dante having to banish him, in so many words. But he hasn't heard anything from Dante himself about the whole mess.

"I don't really know what to say, I know it must be painful. If you have to talk to me you know I'll listen."

"Would you like to walk down there with me? I'd like to go down there, but I'm not sure if I can do it alone."

"Yeah, sure. Put some more clothes on though; don't need to give the neighborhood a peep show."

Looking at the vacant spot from the Devil May Cry office it looks so much smaller, so much more meaningless. It is not until Nero looks around the area, the crumbling buildings around it, and the shear emptiness of the place that he begins to feel intimidated. It's as if he can almost feel something; negative energy? Doom? Sadness? He doesn't know for sure, but he knows it's overwhelming. He wonders how Dante can even stand it.

"It's funny how I can go on with my daily life and pretend this site doesn't even exist isn't it? How most days I don't even think about it?"

Nero rubs his arms from the cold, which is now worse than the light chill he felt sitting on the stoop. He's still carrying the blue rose, even though before now he wasn't aware that he brought it with him, has no idea why he did.

"Are you sure you want to rehash all this with me, I respect your choice if you really don't want to." Nero looks at Dante, still worried. A look so true and emotional it almost hurts Dante to see it. He places a hand on Nero's shoulder, giving him a comforting squeeze. "You didn't ask me to tell you, I asked you to listen, remember? You're doing me a favor here."

And with that, Dante starts from the beginning, all about his childhood, his parents, and his brother. Nero never objects, never interrupts, he merely watches Dante walk around the area; he listens to him like he's never listened to anyone before. He's not sure how much time has pasted, doesn't care, and when Dante finally drags the last part out of him, which Nero can see has been hard for him, a silence fills the air.

Dante turns, looks back at Nero, "Are you ok, kid?"

Nero says nothing, he just runs over to Dante and hugs him, a movement so sudden, Dante hesitates for a minute, his arms at his sides, and then he returns the embrace. He's grateful for it.

"I can't even begin to imagine how you must feel." Nero begins, talking fast with urgency. "It's sad, empty, and ugly. It makes me so angry that you've been through this with no one to protect you the way you have protected everyone else." Nero squeezes him tighter, fighting the urge just start crying in the older man's arms. His mouth close to Dante's ear, "I can't feel what you feel but I know it feels bad. I'm sure it makes you mad that all this is so real and not some nightmare. How angry you must feel sometimes at Vergil, at your parents. Angry, sad, hurt, and longing to see them again all at once."

Dante remembers then that Nero himself was an orphan. He squeezes him back just as tight.

Finally letting go of him, Dante places both his hands on Nero's shoulders, looking down into his eyes. "Vergil was consumed by his unending goal of claiming our father's power. He was seduced and taken in by evil; no matter what I did I couldn't help him. I've wrestled with that fact for a long time; sometimes I still feel that I should have done more, that I could have saved him. But, the fact is, that ideal is a lie; there was no saving Vergil because he didn't want me to save him. He wanted to self-destruct on some level and even though it came off that he hated me, he really only hated himself."

Nero is quiet again, feeling the heavy emotional weight of the place where Temen-ni-gru once stood even more.

"Vergil felt the burnt of our parents. He felt that our mother favored me over him. I don't necessarily believe this, but I don't know for sure if it's totally untrue. My mother sacrificed herself to save us both, to save our father and keep the demon doorway sealed, but, she did take me and not Vergil. So, I don't know. I have no idea how Vergil could have known that either, but I'd imagine it must have been hard for him not to think it, any child would, I suppose. I wish that it had been him she took with her instead of me; he needed her love so much. So did I of course, but I would have managed." Dante looks at Nero who has now wandered from him and is sitting on a slab of fallen building. He looks confused.

"Ok," Dante says, "I'm getting off on a tangent here. The point I'm trying to make here is that even IF our mother favored me over Vergil, even IF she thought he was second best, I never did. That's something Vergil never realized. There was a time when that boy took care of me as if he were my much older brother, there was a time when I thought that boy hung the moons and stars. Vergil was more of a family to me in those times than my parents, who all though they meant well, were never as real as he was. He shouldn't have taken his mother issues out on me, because I loved him. Even when that cold-hearted mother fucker was trying to slit my throat, I loved him."

Nero could take it no longer, let Dante call him over-emotional and a pussy if he wanted to, but the urge to squirt some tears was too much now, and Dante watched in what could only be described as heartache when one of Nero's tears landed on the rose in his hands.

"Nero, I'm glad you're listening to all of this." Dante said, kneeling in front of him. "I'm glad you're here for me when I need you, just like always."

"Why are we here? Are you paying tribute to your brother?"

"No, that's not the point of this at all. I'm here because of you." Nero looks at him puzzled, and Dante wipes a tear off the younger man's face. "Vergil was more lenient on his demon side, he let it consume him. You have no idea how scared I was that the same would happen to me, that the demon blood in me was too powerful for weak human emotions. I wondered for years if I was more demon that human, I wondered which side of my heart was the strongest. I don't wonder that anymore. I know that I am human in my heart, and in my soul, I suppose, if you want to get all spiritual about it. I know that I am human every time I look at you."

Nero gasped a little, very faintly. "How do you know that?"

"Like I said, this isn't about Vergil anymore. I need to let that go as best I can so I can hang on to what I have, you. This is about you. This day is here now to remind me that I had it bad once, I had a void that I felt was never to be filled again and then I met you. So, while I will always love, miss, and feel sorrow for my brother, I am happy that I'm alive. You make me happy, you've shown me what a brother is supposed to be, what love is supposed to be, you feel like home, and you have no idea how much that means to a wandering soul like me. I only hope that I can show you, somehow, someway."

Nero lifts his hand to wipe a tear off of Dante this time; one that Dante isn't even aware has fallen. "I think you have shown me. I also think we should leave this here." He gestures to the rose. "For Vergil, wherever he is, I hope he knows all this."

Hours have passed and it is now completely dark. Both Nero and Dante's eyes now an unnatural, beautiful blue by moonlight. Nero gently lays the blue rose down on the place he was sitting just moments before. "I think that's a nice touch." He smiles, all though sadly. "You think he would have liked me?"

"Ha, I defiantly do." Dante says, resting his chin on Nero's shoulder, leaning on him from behind and wrapping his arms around him. Then into the younger man's ear, he whisperers softly…

"Thank you."

* * *

Gah, I hope this wasn't too out of character, I tried the best I could for these two to have a serious moment. I hope it worked somewhat well anyway! More stories to come soon, workin' on them as we speak! Also, I have no clue if the place where Temen-ni-gru was is still empty or not, but it worked well for dramatic effect :P


End file.
